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Horror World Conversation with RJ and Julia Sevin of Creeping Hemlock Press
Creeping Hemlock Press is the brainchild/labor of love of RJ and Julia Sevin, a New Orleans couple with a deep appreciation of pulp, pop culture and horror fiction. Together, the Sevins have created a specialty press that embodies everything there is to love about specialty presses – a surprising and original line of books that are carefully selected and lovingly produced. From the straight-up horror of Corpse Blossoms, the anthology that started it all, to the old-school crime novel The Fever Kill and the upcoming zombie line-up PRINT IS DEAD, the Sevins continue to follow their publishing muse to exciting and startling places.
The couple was kind enough to take time between shepherding projects in various stages of development to share a few words with Horrorworld.
HW: To kick things off, give us the origin story of Creeping Hemlock Press.
RJ Sevin: The origin is… humbling. We were a couple of horror fans with nothing to do in our spare time. An exposure-only web-zine called The Web of Horror nearly became a Cemetery Dance-esque magazine called Corpse Blossoms. When we realized that we weren’t ready to endure the rigors of a magazine, we ditched the idea and kept the title, opting for an anthology instead. Since then we’ve learned a lot, and wince at some of the decisions we made back then, but the book itself holds up.
Julia Sevin: We moved onto longer, freestanding works in a variety of genres: Tom Piccirilli’s poetic, hard-edged novella Frayed and adrenaline-spiked retro crime novel The Fever Kill, then Tim Lebbon and Lindy Moore’s tender and brutal mutant-apocalypse novella Children of the New Disorder, Adam-Troy Castro’s lean, mean novella about fighting machines, The Shallow End of the Pool. Chase these with a couple of sardonic zombie chapbooks and you have our total run till now.
HW: If Creeping Hemlock Press had a mission statement, what would it be?
RJS: We’ve narrowed it down to two mission statements: “Destroy mankind and enslave the children” or “Do the very best job that we can, and make pretty books while we’re at it.” I’m not sure which one we want to make official…
HW: What have been the highlights - both personally and professionally - of running your own press?
JS: The vast riches are nice, but constant tax evasion is getting to be kind of a pain in the neck. Obviously VIP treatment is something of a perk. The only really unmitigated pleasure comes from reader feedback about the books. We feed off it. Like vampires. Oh, be on the lookout for our next anthology, Feedback Vampires. “This time, the vampires will eat your words!”
RJS: Zombie Fest was fun. Hanging out in the Monroeville Mall and hearing folks fawn over the chapbooks that we produced just for that event, Thin Them Out, co-written by us with Kim Paffenroth, and Gary A. Braunbeck’s excellent and clever Flesh Is Fleeting… Art Is Forever. Editor extraordinaire John Joseph Adams was there, and he read Thin Them Out and surprised us twice: he showed up at our impromptu after party, and months later he bought Thin Them Out for his upcoming and awesome anthology, The Living Dead 2.
HW: What kinds of things are you looking for when looking for the next Creeping Hemlock Press book?
JS: We have short attention spans, like some kind of… [gets a sandwich, watches Season 2 of Dexter] Whatever we’re in the mood for, you know? We’ve never nailed ourselves down to one genre. Whatever we think people will like. Offbeat, original, intelligent.
RJS: Something that will make us obscenely rich.
HW: Your debut title was the critically lauded anthology Corpse Blossoms. Are we going to see a Corpse Blossoms 2, or perhaps another anthology?
JS: One or the other. In good time. Editing the anthology was a great time and obviously the result was appreciated.
RJS: Sure. One or the other, like the lady says. In the meantime, Corpse Blossoms will soon be getting a trade paperback release, and it will contain a few additional bonus stories. There’s probably a zombie anthology of some kind in the cards, because, you know, there just aren’t enough zombie books in the world.
HW: Your latest project is the re-release of Lawrence Block's 1960 erotica novel Campus Tramp. How did this come about, and what can you tell us about the book?
JS: As crime fiction readers, we love Block, natch. We heard through Tom Piccirilli that he had some old lesbian nurse novels, printed under pseudonyms, which hadn’t been released since the 1960s. We thought, “Lesbian nurses? That’s right up our alley!” and asked him about it. He was hesitant about those properties but he has a certain amount of pride in Campus Tramp because it’s very much about his alma mater, Antioch College, and so attained a high degree of notoriety and cachet there. It’s really an amazing novel and we’ve had a lot of fun with it.
HW: Will you be handling more re-releases in the future, or concentrating on original work?
JS: Next spring we’re going to release April North, another pseudonymous smut paperback of Block’s from around the same time, that quite honestly meets a higher literary standard than does Campus Tramp. It’s great stuff. These books are nothing like contemporary erotica. It’s like a goodie basket of unexpected historical and literary qualities.
HW: You've recently announced a new line of zombie books called PRINT IS DEAD. What can you tell us about this line?
JS: Oh, God. We’re so friggin’ jazzed for this one. We’re commissioning a bunch of original novels, from some names you know, some you don’t, that we’re going to release as nice economical trade paperbacks. Quality zombie reading for the masses!
HW: What can you tell us about the debut novel, The Living by Kealan Patrick Burke?
JS: Kealan originally wrote The Living as a serialized novel released through a string of blog entries, with the outcome of each segment being determined by his readers. As you might guess, this led to a rather choppy story that didn’t really go in the direction Kealan hoped for. We’re working with him to really overhaul the thing, and to bring it closer to what he intended it to be.
RJS: For those who read it in its serialized version, the print edition of The Living will read like an entirely new novel. It’s thoroughly revised and expanded, and it’s going to be a dream come true for fans of wall-to-wall zombie action. Rightfully so, Kealan is known for his “quiet horror,” but here I think he let his love of video games explode to the surface. It’s a rapid-fire action adventure brimming with varied and grotesque undead horrors.
It’s probably not going to the first book in the line, though. Another book is closer to going to press. It’s tentatively titled Rotten Blood, and is by a complete unknown, Mason James Cole . It’s a lot different from The Living, and is probably the most purely Romero-esque zombie novel I’ve ever read. It’s also harrowingly violent in a way that calls to mind something like Ketchum’s Off Season.
HW: Are these going to be "shared universe" stories? Is there anything unifying them beyond being zombie books?
RJS: They’re stand-alone. Some very Romero-esque, others not at all. A few of the novels have been pitched to us as the first chapters of trilogies, so there’s that, but no shared worlds.
HW: How many PRINT IS DEAD books are in the works so far?
RJS: At least six. For now we’re focusing on The Living and Rotten Blood (or whatever the author decides to call it), and are expecting several other manuscripts by early 2011. Whichever books are ready in time for World Horror 2011 in Austin will debut there.
HW: As publishers, you're on the forefront of the transition into digital media as a viable platform for the publishing industry. What's your take on how publishers big and small will need to incorporate digital formats as things move forward?
JS: For my own reading habits, I’m a pulp product purist for the moment. As a publisher, we ignore the growing demand for e-reader versions at our own peril. It’s not going away. A more broad concern is the role of filesharing between consumers. You can fight the tide all you like but people are going to do it. Rather than getting wound up over some hypothetical lost sales, the smart move for a business is to find ways to make new media trends work for you. For example, free excerpts or complete pdfs with embedded promotions of your press and your other books.
HW: Will Creeping Hemlock Press release books digitally, or are you planning on sticking with the traditional?
JS: Absolutely you’ll see Creeping Hemlock as a digital presence. We’re all about it.
HW: What individual projects are you both working on?
RJS: I’m writing a great deal. I’ll have a short story in an upcoming issue of Cemetery Dance, and I have one in the just-released War of the Worlds: Frontlines anthology. My novel, Eightball Fever, has gotten some encouraging responses from the handful of people who’ve read it. Poppy Z. Brite declared it a great piece of New Orleans fiction, and said it was the most harrowing novel she’d read since Lord of the Flies. (I still haven’t recuperated from that one.) Once I’m over the Creeping Hemlock hump, I’m diving back in to put some agent-requested finishing touches on the book, and then we’ll see what happens…
JS: One of New Orleans’ most colorful and beloved TV personalities is the mad scientist and perennial failure Morgus the Magnificent. He had a show here from ’59 to the mid-‘70s, and then again in the late ‘80s. He even had an ill-fated movie, THE WACKY WORLD OF DR. MORGUS, in 1962. We’ve partnered with the producer to spearhead its first-ever DVD release, restored from an original print, and we’re also handling the related promotions and merchandise. It’s one part New Orleans and two parts bizarre black comedy. You can see more at morgusmovie.com.
More personally, I’ve just been accepted to LSU’s renowned graphic design program, so I’m looking forward to taking my next big career step in the spring.
RJS: We’re also prepping a pretty cool graphic novel proposal titled Zero League. It’s been bumping around for nearly a decade now, and it keeps getting pushed aside by other projects, but it’s time is almost at hand. It’s big—a really large, multi-layered, self-contained superhero epic that puts character and drama before ‘splosions, despite the fact that it opens with a really big one. We’re approaching it with the same care and attention to detail as we would a novel, and it should be really special, whenever it gets around to actually happening.
HW: What does the future hold for Creeping Hemlock Press?
RJS: The same thing it holds for all of us: mystery, success, failure; happiness and sorrow, pain, life, and death.
JS: More concretely, you’re going to see a lot of emphasis on PRINT IS DEAD and other affordable, non-limited trade paperbacks for some time. We have confidence that this move will fatten up our overall physique and, eventually, make some other fancier projects happen (such as the long-promised Corpse Blossoms signed limited edition) with the speed and specialness that we’ve always wanted but have never been able to realize on our old budget. Anybody who would like to keep updated can sign up for our newsletter.
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